Arts Watch.

Despite Crowd's Support, Black Cat Followed Cat Power To Concert

December 20, 2000|By Bill Meyer. Special to the Tribune.

You might expect a musical act called Cat Power to be a band, or to be aggressively pro-feline, but neither is always the case. The name came from a tractor cap. And regardless of whether Chan (pronounced "Shawn") Marshall performs with a band or on her own, she's always billed as Cat Power.

The Southern-born, 28-year-old singer-songwriter's early recordings used indie-rock's brittle vernacular, but her work has always been nourished by the emotional wellspring of country music and the blues.

She has broadened her stylistic reach on Cat Power's latest albums. "Moon Pix" was recorded two years ago in Melbourne, Australia, with members of an instrumental combo called the Dirty Three. Their fluid accompaniment allowed her to shift between Dylanesque balladry, anthemic rock and bare-bones disco.

It also freed her to sing with more restraint, which paradoxically amplified the romantic and spiritual longing that infuses her songs.

On the other hand "The Covers Record," which was released earlier this year, features Marshall alone at the piano and on guitar. She stripped a dozen songs associated with artists as disparate as torch chanteuse Nina Simone and indie-rocker Smog of instrumental flourishes, choruses and even their original melodies.

This approach yielded impressively transformative results on the Velvet Underground's "I Found a Reason" and the Rolling Stones' "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction." The former, freed from its original ironic delivery, became an achingly tender love song while the latter, shorn of its adolescent attitude, became a bluesy lament.

But playing alone can be like walking a tightrope without a net. Marshall fell hard when she played the first of three sold-out solo shows at Schuba's on Sunday evening.

She got off on the wrong foot, singing only six words of Michael Hurley's "Werewolf" before she stopped to adjust her amplifier and retune her guitar.

Over the next 10 minutes she restarted the song several times, but each time she halted it to move her microphone to different parts of the stage or tune some more. Eventually she enlisted the audience's assistance in her search for the note E.

The next song, Robert Johnson's "Come on in My Kitchen," was better. Pitched just above a whisper, Marshall's singing turned it from a libidinous come-on into a fearful omen of impending doom.

But when she sang "It's gonna be raining soon," she might as well have been referring to her own performance.

Again and again she stopped midsong to plead for adjustments to the sound mix and stage lighting, and eventually began interrupting her own singing to apologize abjectly to the crowd.

She switched from guitar to piano and back again, but repeatedly got so frustrated that she cut her songs short.

Finally Marshall abandoned the stage altogether to join the supportive crowd on the floor, where she finally got comfortable enough to sing a couple of her own songs all the way through.

The concert ended when, after a final apology, Marshall clambered back onto the stage and put away her guitar.